November 19, 2006

40 comments:

With all due affection and respect, is this really an award that you want a nomination for? Of all the complimentary things I could imagine saying about Ann Althouse, I don't know that "wow, she's a total conservative diva" is really one of them.

It depends on how you interpret "diva." If the emphasis is on the word "diva" -- as it should be -- rather than on "conservative" -- I think I definitely deserve it. It's not about who is the most conservative -- which would be incredibly stupid -- it is who embodies "diva" and can also be accepted by the conservatives. Clearly, I fit that.

I stand by the "not so much". No conservative would vote so consistently for Russ Feingold. Not gonna' do it no matter how handsome and eligible he is. And voting for Tommy Thompson once and W. once does not a conservative make. There's gotta' be more of a track record.

Well, all the liberals think I'm conservative and it drives them nuts. It's this aspect of driving them nuts that should count for so much in a diva contest. But it's not diva-ish to keep pointing this out... so I will withdraw from this conversation for now.

If the contest were for Blogress Diva who Perpetually Perturbs the Petulant Liberals--you're the winner. It was a banner year for that [Paglia, Feministing, Pajamas media, and more]. But words mean things and "conservative" is part of the title which must count for something.

I'll be over there to second your nomination, Simon, but, as I am not an attorney, nor do I play one on the internet, it will take me a while to develop a believable justification ;-) Ruth Anne's demurral to the contrary, I am fond of the big tent proposition and had planned to combine that with a perennial favorite, "It send the KosKids into a frenzy!"

Internet Ronin said... "I'll be over there to second your nomination, Simon, but ... I am not an attorney, nor do I play one on the internet."

Well, nor am I. Forthcomingness and a willingness to frankly answer any question (as for example I backed up Freder's point about possible war crimes indictments) are not traits that would seem to well-serve budding attorneys.

On the other hand, since we're in an inherently self-congratulatory sort of thread, I have to admit with some embarassment to being quite flattered that Dahlia Lithwick cited something I wrote as an example of the debate going on among "legal academics," and I have been told by various people that I really ought to either take the LSAT or go to law school. If I had $120,000 burning a hole in my pocket, I'd quit playing an amateur law student on the internet and go do it for real. :p

OK, since I included Ann in both the original competition and this year's list (of potential nominees), I should note that by conservative, we're referring to conservative & libertarian. Or maybe given Ann's iconoclasm, we should say non-leftist. Ann nails its when she says that it should count for something in a diva contest that she drives liberals nuts.

Or perhaps it's just that I, as a libertarian-inclined gay conservative, like Ann's blog. She commands the respect of this gay man.

Thanks, GayPatriotWest. I think I should be in the contest if for no other reason than that it gets people to have good conversation about what the title means. And because I drive liberals crazy. Our "dave" is Exhibit A.

Ruth Anne's list is good and could be lengthened (though it should be shortened by the removal of Pajamas Media, which isn't liberal). In thinking about me and the diva concept, you've got to remember this incident where I hurt Camille Paglia's feelings -- her fragile feelings! Who has anything to compare to that? And then I stood up to a whole swarm of liberal bloggers who went nuts because I made fun of the way a feminist posed proudly in from on Bill Clinton. That was the ultimate, folks. They tried to destroy me -- and thought it was a really important project. As yourself why they fear me. And in person, I simultaneous charmed John Amato and made TRex growl! I'd really like to know what my competitors did that compares with those two things.

And let's pay attention to the "diva" concept. It has to do with having a lot of gay male admirers, a subject we were just talking about at length in this post.

Simon: If you apply to law school, you should definitely put that in your personal statement. In fact, you should apply to law school just so you can put that in your personal statement. Hell, you can put this in your personal statement... but that's trickier. Actually, you shouldn't put this in your personal statement, since I drive liberals nuts, and that might mess with the mind of whoever's reading the application.

One thing I’ve never understood about Ann is the way she considers the number of people she pisses off to be a mark of her blog’s success.

To me, her blog’s strength lies in its independence and perhaps in its fearlessness, but I don’t consider merely pissing people off to be a sign of intelligent fearlessness, which is really the only kind that Ann should strive for.

Maybe the mere fact that Ann wants this award is proof that she’s a diva.

There’s definitely a side of Ann that aspires to be the Kathy Griffin of political bloggers.

Kathy Griffin qualifies as a diva, and she certainly has a lot of gay fans. But she is no conservative – not by a long shot. In fact, Griffin would probably insult you (humorously) if you ever called her a conservative.

And Kathy Griffin is also a lot funnier than Ann, but that’s to be expected, because one is a professional comic and the other is a law professor.

Ann has other strengths, which I think will be neglected if she wins this award. Victory in this contest will probably go to Ann’s head and give her a skewed understanding of why she has so many fans.

I really do believe that the conservative label is on its way to becoming as toxic as the liberal label became in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Ann shouldn’t be so eager to see this depreciating label slapped on her blog by some admiring gay group.

Ann,I know what you meant. LOL. I was making a fairly lame attempt at a joke.

I'm still hoping that I might be eventually able to clean up my foreign law piece - I've bugged you about reading this before, and have largely taken the hint, present thread excepted - enough to get it into a law journal short on submissions, which would probably not look too bad on a personal statement either. But somehow, I think that most admissions officers would only need to make it as far as my email address to figure out I'm probably not the kind of person they're looking for. ;)

Simon can always apply to Pepperdine Law School. I hear there are lots of conservative law profs there.

Here’s another idea: I’ve also heard that Jerry Falwell will soon be adding a law school to his Liberty University. Maybe Simon can wait until Falwell’s law school opens and then apply there.

I’m sure that all the law profs hired by Liberty University will be undying admirers of Scalia. In fact, that will probably be one of the conditions of employment, like swearing a loyalty oath. All new hires in the Liberty law school will probably have to raise their right hand and swear undying admiration of Scalia.

I agree that some good points on the "conservative" label have been made. I have a couple problems.

First off, the Professor's statement that says "Well, all the liberals think I'm conservative" just makes me want to give my parents' answer, "If all your friends were jumping off a bridge, would that make it right?" I think the label "conservative" means something more than "pissing off some liberals". Conservatives should actually stand for something.

I see conservatives as being for life, liberty and property; for limited government; for fiscal responsibility; for a strong national defense; for a strong personal morality; for life at all stages. I agree that conservatism should be a big-tent ideal. I'm about as pro-life as you can get [personally even against contraception], but I might vote for a good defense hawk like Guiliani, thus overlooking his abyssmal record on pro-life issues. There's a pragmatic core at the heart of a conservative--80% of a loaf is better than none--and given the last election where my party got thumped, it's worth looking at what it takes to win.

RE: The Pajamas Media dust-up...couldn't you argue that you took the conservative position there? You were strongly for free speech [even if free speech meant saying a joke that got misunderstood and condemned], free expression [blogging as experimental art form] and not going with the blogging crowd [rugged individualism]? Also, weren't your fiscal interests more free market [I can earn more from blogging than they're willing to pay me over the next three years?] In rethinking that dust-up, even though PJM is sort of a conservative consortium, you arguably took the more conservative position on the issue. And you took some heat for that, too.

Well, at least now we know what to buy Ann for Christmas. ;) Maybe the readers should all club together to buy Ann a batch of books for Christmas that might tempt her over to The Dark Side. :p Reflections on the Revolution in France and The Road to Serfdom, perhaps? I mean, if you're going to be a diva, you've got to know the libretto.

Edward,I think Liberty already has a law school. To my recollection, someone I know is a student there!

As for Pepperdine, you'll know that Kenneth Starr is the Dean at Pepperdine. I once caught him out, you know: he wrote a newspaper article arguing for giving the District of Columbia voting representation in Congress, and in my essay disagreeing with him (and with Viet Dinh, I'm unhappy to report), I noted that the language he attributed to one of Scalia's D.C. Circuit opinions, United States v. Cohen, was actually to be found in Judge Wilkey's concurrence. Scrupulous attention to detail is evidently Dean Starr's hallmark.

In any event, any respect that might accrue to Starr -- and I've not only enjoyed but have cited and been influenced by some of the things he's written, particularly his colloquy with Abner Mikva on legislative history (I don't have the citation handy, sorry) -- dissipated when he took a job that I believe is plainly unconstitutional, the special prosecutor's job.

Moreover, Starr is an outspoken intentionalist (or, at very least, is too lazy to break an old habit and stop talking about "original intent"), and I continue to think that intentionalism is, at very least, in tension with (and at worst, utterly incompatible with) formalism. And you have to remember that formalism is the taproot of all of these theories that I believe in and argue for here and elsewhere, originalism, textualism and so on. Formalism is to originalism as the divinity and resurrection of Jesus Christ is to Christianity: if you don't buy into the former, what the heck is the point of the latter? Don't think that I only criticize liberal judges for getting it wrong.

Ruth Anne: PJM are still not liberals, though you can characterize my stance as conservative. Anyway, you have your definition of conservative, but it is not definitive. I think if you want government to regulate abortion, you're not for limited government in the strong sense. So the term is debatable. Maybe I should claim it and try to impose my meaning on it, as I do with feminism.

Professor A: I'm against the judicial branch legislating about abortion. In 1972, the judicial branch squelched the debate that we still have today.

Government should stand for life, liberty and property. I believe abortion is most akin to another blot on America's history: slavery. In both, human beings are treated as sub-human chattel. It's government's role to support life of its citizens and soon-to-be citizens. Once a life is in being [conception], it should be protected by law. Government should be limited in regulating the living out of one's existing life.

"I think if you want government to regulate abortion, you're not for limited government in the strong sense."

Even the most ardent proponents of limited government would not argue that their belief in limited government would stop government proscribing certain behavior, particularly murder. I've noted before that one's position on abortion has far less to do with where one sits on the political spectrum than it has to do with when one believes life begins (indeed, I would and have argued that one's position on where life begins is the only legitimate reason to oppose abortion, insofar as it seems to me that only "if a child's life is in the balance ... is it legitimate" to argue for a ban on abortion, which is inherently an "invasive, draconian and discriminatory burden upon women"). There's nothing inherently conservative about being pro-life, and nothing inherently liberal about being pro-choice.

BTW, to be a true diva you need to make outrageous demands -- you know, throw a fit if you're not given your specific tea from the Maldives at your preferred temperature, and refuse to enter your office until it's been blessed by a Druid High Priest (Reformed).

Also, explode at random and smack your assistant around, preferably with a cell phone, then sue the cell phone manufacturer.

I deletely the triple-posted comment that was very rude in the way it called attention to a typo in this paragraph I wrote above, which actually has three typos. Here's the corrected paragraph:

Ruth Anne's list is good and could be lengthened (though it should be shortened by the removal of Pajamas Media, which isn't liberal). In thinking about me and the diva concept, you've got to remember this incident where I hurt Camille Paglia's feelings -- her fragile feelings! Who has anything to compare to that? And then I stood up to a whole swarm of liberal bloggers who went nuts because I made fun of the way a feminist posed proudly in front on Bill Clinton. That was the ultimate, folks. They tried to destroy me -- and thought it was a really important project. Ask yourself why they fear me. And in person, I simultaneously charmed John Amato and made TRex growl! I'd really like to know what my competitors did that compares with those two things.

Knoxgirl,I'm certainly flattered (blushing, in point of fact), although I'm not sure I'm worthy of the honor. :) I've worked hard to become as fluent as I am with both method and materials, but alas, if my method is serviceable, I fall down on breadth of knowledge. It's all a process, and I'm learning slowly. Sooner or later, I'll just have to bite the bullet and apply to law school. My principle focus has been on ConLaw and materials that relate to it, in large part because I think that immigrants have an affirmative duty to familiarize themselves with that material, to grasp the theoretical and legal underpinnings of the Republic. It's easy to fall in love with law in the United States when you have a formalist proclivity.

LMAO at the Seagal thing....I now have the uncontrollable urge to watch Under Siege tonight. The kanji are (is?) Japanese for "sensei", which is probably the most succinct way to sum up the place that Justice Scalia occupies in my intellectual constellation (something, I might add, I am fully aware that Scalia would be horrified by - he would suggest, I fancy, that I should spend less time seeking to emulate him and more time seeking to emulate Jesus).